


Habitual

by ohhtheperiphery



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, it's a love story if i stop it right.....here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:37:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhtheperiphery/pseuds/ohhtheperiphery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>12 years, and it's the same story every time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Habitual

**Author's Note:**

> For Fran and Suzy.
> 
> Dates are based off of [this timeline](http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Years_after_Aegon%27s_Landing).

I. JAIME, 277 AL

The boats sailing out of Lannisport are headed out for adventures, great unchartable things, their sails bright white wings on a sea of blue, water and sky melting into each other. The places they are going and the people they will see are always greater for the distance, because from a distance it could be anyone going anywhere. From this distance, the ocean beneath them is just as impenetrable, as full of secrets dark and blue and unknown.

He jumps, of course, because she dares him to.

She meets him at the shoreline. The sky is cloudless bright, spinning overhead. Each breath of air burning, filling his lungs comes as a relief, the grit of sand beneath him as a solid warmth. The sun is blinding, leaving black spots across his vision, but Cersei blocks it out when she leans over, casting him in her shadow.

Jaime grins up at her, unapologetic. "I thought you'd jump, too," he says, because it's true.

"I'm not an idiot." He can't see her expression like this, her whole body backlit by the sun, but he recognizes a hint of laughter tucked away in her voice.

In a nearby cove, she tastes of salt and the sea. Her hair is wet and tangled between his fingers. When he tries to push her against the rocks, she pushes back, turns them around instead so that he's the one with his back to the wall. Her hands in his hair and her mouth on his are insistent, unrelenting, a fight that he only ever fights with her. They break from the kiss hard, gasping in air in the space shared between them.

The exhilaration in his veins is the same headrush of feeling he had when his feet left the edge of the cliff, caught in the fall that might have lasted a moment and might have lasted forever, and somehow lasted everywhere between.

They have always played at this, but lately everything Cersei does sets his skin on fire. The outline of her shoulder blades traced beneath his fingers in the early mornings, when she's still pretending to be asleep. The way she pulls her hair back to expose the white curve of her neck, the warmth of her skin there. The way her entire face lights up for him when she laughs, the way she cries when she's angry, the way her eyes turn a brighter shade of green when she cries.

Jaime traces the soft wet curve of her mouth with the pad of his thumb. The small sound she makes sends a rush of heat through his gut. Here, in the shadows of the cove, she is the sun, golden curls painted dark by the seawater, sticking to the side of her face. She is the only source of light and heat that matters, violent on his skin.

A few weeks later when Father sends him to Crakehall, she is a different kind of violent. There is an almost quiet ferocity locked up tight in her body, like an animal waiting to pounce on its prey.

"Don't go," Cersei commands.

Jaime frowns. _What would_ you _do_ , he almost asks, but bites the question down. It's a _stupid_ question; Cersei is the sort of girl who would throw herself in a den of literal lions, if it meant she would get what she wanted. The sort of girl who tells him to jump so he jumps, who slips her hands against his neck at night and whispers, "I'm cold," stealing bits of warmth where she can take it.

He doesn't really need to ask.

"I have to," he tells her instead. Cersei looks away, anger shaping her jaw. It is that image of her at eleven that will stay with him, in the years that follow; the stiff outline of her, turned away from him. He wants to do what she asks of him, to open her up, see the smile on her face when he makes her laugh, when he makes her happy, when they kiss until they're breathless.

But this choice is not theirs to make.

  


II. CERSEI, 281 AL

Visenya's Hill is a ways from the Red Keep, from the eyes and ears that frequent the castle. The inn she's found down Eel Alley is old but not decrepit. She sees to it that they won't be missed, for a night, has Jaime go before her, just before dusk. Follows when the light has gone down further still, wrapped in muslin and cover of darkness, the hood of her cloak pulled up to obscure her from any passing eyes.

Jaime looks as if he's been pacing the room like some sort of caged animal, when she comes to him. She's barely gotten the locks in place before he's on her, hands in her hair, shoving her back against the door with a hunger that sends a rush of heat through her veins.

It is nothing new, knowing each other like this, but somehow it feels different, tonight, each touch charged with a dangerous energy that sets her skin ablaze. For once, they don't have to worry about being discovered, and they tumble to the bed in a flurry of limbs and discarded clothes.

In the dark of Casterly Rock, they used to explore the shape of one another's bodies, with an almost clumsy innocence. The room tonight is dark, but there is no hint of innocence in the way Jaime looks at her, takes in the sight of her naked flesh. He traces every inch of her, as if memorizing the way her skin responds beneath his fingertips.

They fuck like they belong to each other, like two corpses that need the same flesh and blood and heat to survive. Jaime feels so good inside her; she groans as he thrusts, meeting the rhythm of his hips with her own, whispering his name softly at the crook of his neck.

"You don't have to be so quiet," he whispers back. "Father can't hear you from here."

The sound that draws out of her belongs entirely to Jaime. Cersei stills beneath him, moves her hand through the sweat at the small of his back. "If you want me to be louder, you're going to have to fuck me harder."

She doesn't have to tell him twice.

She can't ever remember coming so hard, feeling so good, so _alive_. She collapses back on the bed, after, catching her breath, laughter caught low in her throat when Jaime nuzzles at her neck, bites softly at the skin there.

His eyes are green reflections of hers, lying beside her, staring at her. "You're beautiful." He says it softly, with an air of reverence, as if he is just discovering her, every time he sees her.

Cersei swallows. She feels as if there is something inside her, some fire burning under her skin. She hadn't even realized how much she missed him, how empty she was without him, not really. She thought she knew, but then he was _there_ , with her, in her. When they came together, it was almost as if he had never left.

When she tells him her idea about the Kingsguard, Jaime is apprehensive, unsure. "There's Casterly Rock," he says, brow furrowed.

Cersei frowns in return, feels a spike of anger race through her. They come together; they are torn apart. She is sick of it. "Is it a rock you want, or me?" she asks him. He doesn't answer that, not right away, though he does lean over to kiss her -- a deep kiss, a hungry kiss, a devouring kiss.

The rest of the night is a blur in her memory, of bodies and of pleasure, of Jaime's lips on her. He makes her come with his mouth, which he's never done before. She feels wrecked afterwards, in the best way possible, trembles when he leans above her and kisses her again, letting her taste herself on his tongue. She gasps, clings to him, mouth falling open beneath his.

His answer is obvious, she realizes, later. She may as well not have even asked. What is Casterly Rock, when they are the only home the other has ever truly needed? She wakes in the morning wrapped in his arms, the warmth of him. Their breath is intertwined like the rest of them, his heart beating steady against her chest.

She cannot have Rhaegar, cannot have what was promised her. Why should Jaime have any different? Besides, the thought of him married to Lysa Tully would almost be laughable, if it didn't make her feel so ill.

It is _selfish_ , she knows. But how else can she be, with Jaime? Wanting him will always be selfish, as long as he is a part of her. She cannot scrub him out, can never wash him away, even if she wished to. They will always be drawn together, she is sure of it, like the pull of the tide, or the sun following the moon. She watches her twin, asleep beside her, thinks for one dizzying moment that this could almost be enough.

Of course, it all falls to pieces before the next turn of the moon, another stupid broken dream slipping through her hands.

  


III. JAIME, 283 AL

It should be easy to follow orders, the easiest thing in the world. It isn't. He stands very still, all the same; easy or not, he succeeds. The room is still, also, as if they were all tied there, anchored down by the screams. But the only person who is anchored to anything is Brandon Stark.

He can't turn away from this on the outside but it is easy enough to turn away on the inside. He thinks of Casterly Rock, of climbing the cliffs as a child with Cersei. It is a bright memory, a warm memory.

The light and heat in the throne room are different, tonight. He isn't sure which feels more like a dream, the memories of his twin or the sounds of Rickard Stark screaming as he is roasted alive. They are all puppets on Aerys's strings, limbs pulled tight and lifeless.

But there is always a choice, even for puppets.

How do you choose between a father and a king? It's all lies, anyway, he decides later, in this same room. This time he had not stood silent; this time he is wiping Aerys's blood off his blade. Is he a son, or is he a knight? How can he be both, how can he be those things and all the rest, too -- brother and protector and lover and enemy and friend? Where is the place where each overlaps with the other, where the wrong choice gives way to the right one?

"I'll marry Cersei, when we're grown," he remembers telling his mother, doesn't know how old he had been. But he had been wrong about that, too, another role he cannot possibly mesh with the others he is meant to take.

Lady Joanna had smiled sadly. At least, that's how he remembers her. That, and the feel of her fingers running soft through his hair. "You can't marry Cersei," she tells him. "She's your sister."

He frowns. "Father's your cousin."

"Jaime," she says, kneeling down so that they're eye-to-eye, "brothers and sisters don't marry. One day you'll be a great knight, the strongest and bravest in all the land. There will be no man like you in all the Seven Kingdoms, and your father and I will find you a bride worthy of such a man."

Tonight she is half right. From this high up on the throne, the room, the world changes. Everything is smaller, slipping further away with each passing moment, so that he could almost believe that he was the only person left in the world. Except, of course, for Aerys, cold and still and silent, bleeding out on the marbled floor.

There is no man like him, here, no one to understand, to absolve him of his acts. He wonders what his mother would say, if she could see him now. If she would still smile that sad smile, touch his face. Say _you did it for us_ , acknowledge his choice, the necessity, the inevitability of it. Promise him that the world might still fall open for him, that after every night there is a day, after every winter a spring.

There is no use following those thoughts. Instead, he sits, and he waits. Like taking the first step over the edge of a cliff, he feels strangely calm, waiting to see what happens next. The only emotion he can find to hold onto is a dull ache, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, a feeling he has kept close with him, tucked away for many years.

He wants to go home.

The whispers of a name will go before him like wingless ravens. He doesn't hear them to his face but he sees it in their eyes. In the songs, victory never tasted so bitter; there was the war, and there was the losing side and the winning side. In the songs, no one ever whispered behind the hero's back while smiling courteously to his face.

Jaime watches a boy who is staring up at the procession making its way through the streets of Lannisport. They may as well have been riding on dragons, not horses, judging from the open-mouthed gaping of this boy, and the others like him. He whispers something to his mother as Jaime passes, tugging frantically at her skirts. The woman shushes him, but her eyes follow Jaime as well.

Not a hero, then. That's fine; it isn't a hero's welcome he was expecting, much less wanting. There's only one thing he wants, and she's in the distance, somewhere in the outline of Casterly Rock against the horizon.

She's in red and he's still in the white, when he comes to her late that night, in the privacy of her bedchamber, the one they would share so often as children. He barely greets her before Cersei peels off his cloak, his armor, his every last defense, climbs atop him and straddles him, hands buried in his hair and hips thrusting with an insistency he recognizes, reciprocates. Does she think she needs the insistency, the urgency, to fuck him? That he isn't always something open, for her, a bruise waiting to be brought to surface?

There's the world as it knows itself, the outside world, spaces anyone can see. But as far as Jaime has found, things rarely make as much sense there, in the light of day, in the eyes of the people. He's been there, he's seen it; he's fought in the fields, watched the dying, the brave and the craven alike. Felt the thrum of battle, of war, beneath his palms, blade in hand.

All that pales in comparison to Cersei, head thrown back and mouth trembling open, grinding down on him, their bodies aching to be closer with each thrust of her hips. He wraps his hands against the small of her waist, holds her in place against him. The taste of her skin is all the homecoming he will ever need; the sight of her -- eyes closed and lips parted, shuddering as she drives herself down on him -- is the one memory that will haunt him to his last days, he knows with all the certainty in the world.

Cersei digs her fingernails into the skin of his back, when she's about to come. She is an uncontrollable force, tremoring above him, coming with a gasp that's strangled out of her, a sound almost as if she were in pain. His sister always comes with a violence, a savagery, her features hardened rather than softened by the height of her pleasure.

Jaime lets her catch her breath. Cersei steadies herself, doesn't pull away from where he's still buried hard inside her. Jaime flexes his fingers at her hips; it takes everything in him not to overturn her and fuck her until she cries out again.

Green flashes dangerously -- serpentine more than leonine -- when she opens her eyes, bearing down on him in careful deliberation. He doesn't bother stifling his groan, pulls her closer instead. She runs the hint of fingernails through his hair, his scalp.

"You killed him," she breathes. It isn't a question.

Jaime's breath catches in his throat. "Yes," he says.

Cersei leans forward, drawing herself around him, their chests pressed together, slick with sweat. He closes his eyes.

"Tell me."

Jaime feels a flash of anger. His fingers tighten, gripping hard at her hips, harder than he means to. Cersei gasps, slides against him at the sudden harshness of his touch, her body tensing.

Cersei's hands are small, warm pinpoints at his wrists, lifting them off from her waist. She pulls off from him, too. He frowns, suddenly lost without the warmth of her, but she doesn't go very far.

"Behind your back," she demands, motioning to his hands. It's the same voice she's been echoing off their father since they were children, the severity of it writ harsh across the lines of her face, the sharp lock of her jaw.

Jaime raises an eyebrow, stares at her, considering. It almost seems worth it to be obstinate, to take hold of her and overcome her as he had the mind to do, earlier. But Cersei moves with a sudden violence he wasn't expecting, a mirror of himself from before, though she doesn't have near the same strength behind it. She digs one hand through his hair, pulling him forward. The other is wrapped tight, unmoving, at his cock.

"I want your hands behind your back," she says, the words punctuated, careful. "Don't make me tell you again."

He does as she bids, shifts so that he is sitting at the edge of the bed with his hands locked behind him. Stares up to meet her gaze, not quite defiant, but not relenting, either. He watches, curious, when she leans down to gather something from the floor, where their clothes lay discarded. She comes back with his belt, and he feels his eyebrows rising a bit further. She ignores him, moves instead to wrap it around his wrists.

Jaime flexes his fingers, feels the warmth of the leather binding his hands together. It's tight enough to hold them, though not so tight as he's lost any feeling in his fingers, yet. Cersei leans back, considering him as if he were a piece of artwork made just for her. The ghost of a smile flickers across her lips, and she traces the line of his collarbone with the hint of her fingertips.

"Tell me," she repeats. "I want to hear how he died."

Jaime shifts, the line of leather cutting into his skin when he does so, pulling it tighter. "He told me to bring him Father's head," he begins, at a loss. Cersei slides against him, doesn't slip him back inside her, but straddles his lap, traces kisses down the line of his throat as he speaks. He digs his own nails into his palm. "So when he turned his back, I slit his throat."

The sudden grip of her hand around his cock comes as a surprise, as is the noise it rips out from him. Cersei hushes him softly, the gentle hiss of her voice at odds with the forcefulness of her fingers, one hand around his erection, the other buried harsh in his hair. He relents, straining his neck back into her hold, thrusting almost involuntarily into her touch. He's been hard for so long; he needs this, needs her, needs to come.

He tries telling her, but Cersei shushes him again. "Keep going," she instructs him, tightening her grip around him.

The words are coming easier now, with each stroke of her hand. "He was insane," Jaime says, lost in the heightening wave of her. She bites at his neck, follows teeth with tongue, doesn't seem concerned over what mark she might leave behind. "He would have burned the whole city. He had wildfire hidden -- everywhere. So I -- killed him."

He isn't sure the words are making sense, anymore, but Cersei doesn't stop him. "The pyromancers, too -- all of them, otherwise they might have finished what Aerys planned to… I had to, what other choice did I have?" He bites down on the words, feels his anger growing at the memories. "Who are they, to judge?"

"Who?"

"They -- everyone. Robert, Ned Stark." Jaime feels a hint of laughter, bubbling from his lips, feels some of the absurdity of it, hands bound behind his back, telling Cersei like this, his cock aching between their bodies, sliding through her fingers. He leans into her, groans in frustration when she slows. "It was -- Ned Stark, who finally came, after I'd killed him, and if you could have seen the way he looked at me, as if I had -- as if it were _me_ who was going to burn down half a city. He wanted me sent to the Wall, for being a traitor to the realm." He struggles stupidly against the binding, against Cersei. "Cersei, I need--"

" _Don't_ ," she says, lets go of his cock to bury her nails into the skin at the base of his hair, the back of his neck. He groans again, leaning further into her. She is the only source of friction, of balance, holding him up, holding him together. "Not yet. Don't come until I let you."

He chokes on her name, wants nothing more than to turn her over, to hold her down and fuck her until she's the one trembling and desperate beneath him. _Hasn't she taken enough_ , he thinks, but then she's off him, is on her knees beside the bed, one hand at the base of his cock and the other pressed to the inside of his thigh, staring up at him.

"No," she breathes, lips parted, eyes locked to his, or his to hers. "You don't have to do anything until I let you, Jaime."

And suddenly he knows. Knows he's got this story backwards, knows with a certainty that cuts, that burns. Knows that sometimes what is given looks like what is taken, and sometimes it is the other way around. Cersei understands, Cersei _always_ understands. She can give him that, when no one else can; gives him what she can, now, her mouth soft and wet when she slides it over him, the length of her tongue under his cock, drawing him in.

He wants his hands in her hair, can't bite back a moan as she works her lips and tongue over him. He stares after her lips, swollen and wet when she pulls off him for a moment. Her hands trace small circles at the inside of his thighs as she runs her tongue along his cock, murmurs his name, calls him _brother_ before whispering her assent and sliding her mouth back around him. He comes with her permission, hard and dizzying on her tongue, everything ripped out from him, belonging entirely to her.

He barely registers anything, in the moments that follow. At some point Cersei is back on the bed beside him, reaching to unwind the belt and free his hands. Blood rushes back into them, circulation he hadn't even noticed being cut off, and Cersei slips her fingers soft at his wrists, drawing them around to thread his fingers between her own. They lie stretched against each other, an odd echo of what they used to be, children playing at one another's bodies, here, in the cover of night.

"Ned Stark is a fool," she murmurs. Her eyelids are low, the features of her face soft, subdued. "You did it for us. For the house. For the family."

Jaime runs the tips of his fingers, down the length of her arm, watches as she shivers beneath the touch. She is not the sun, so much as the sand, tonight, taking in the light and the heat that the sun gives out, radiating it back. Held, contained, kept safe.

He has been coming home to her for a long time, for as long as he can remember. He can forget, in this moment, small and fragile though it is, the things that have been and that are coming. She gives him that, here. Allows him that, amongst other things.

But in the coming weeks, they will have to go back, back to that place. And she will be a queen, wrapped in Robert Baratheon's cloak, in the colors of his house and the syllables of his name. Renamed, just as Jaime is, also -- _Kingslayer_. Robert was the first to call him that. It seems he is giving them both names they do not want. Cersei doesn't say it, but it's there in her eyes, absolved, understood.

The moment is fragile, but his sister is not. She wraps around him, pulls him into her warmth. Will keep him there, for the time being, like a secret from the world, like a choice he will never have to make because she has already made it for him.

  


IV. CERSEI, 284 AL

She hasn't even been married a fortnight and they're back to this, Jaime kneeling between her legs, his lips warm, tracing kisses there. He's slow and careful and nothing like Robert -- or Robert's nothing like him, that's it, that's the way it should go. Jaime doesn't even touch her sex, just kisses at the inside of her thighs. Knows, knows from the way her body heaves, breaths deepening as he continues, what he's doing to her, how wet that alone makes her.

It's Jaime on his knees, probably -- staring up at her when he pulls away, face flushed and lips just barely parted. It's that sight of him that sends her over, a lightning storm on her skin, a poison rush in her veins. His hair between her fingers is nothing compared to the way his eyes slide shut when she _pulls_ , drags his head back, and he follows. Is that it, then, is that what they have become? A queen and her knight? She is curious, but not satisfied.

"Will you do whatever I tell you?" she asks.

Jaime raises his eyebrows. He looks amused at the prospect. "Would you like me to call you 'Your Grace'?" he asks, mockingly. Cersei scowls down at him, and the smile slips from his lips as if she has struck him.

"Whatever you want," he repeats, this time without the mockery. Returns his lips to her, kisses soft as she shifts her fingers just as gentle through his hair. His hands are warm also, at her thighs, sliding over her skin. _He looks as if a man at prayer_ , she thinks, her breath lost for a moment, at the thought.

"Your sword," she says. The words feel heavy, slurred in her own mouth. Jaime's eyes open, but his focus is lost, swum in what she can only assume is the heat of her. She lets her fingernails scrape lightly against the skin of his scalp, watches as he leans after the touch.

"My…?"

"Sword, _yes_." Her voice comes out impatient, childish, but it doesn't matter. How could it matter -- anything matter -- with Jaime on his knees before her, head tilted back into the force of her grasp?

He offers it up to her, silently. A longsword, she remembers, from his lessons. The hilt of it is cool beneath her fingers.

The feeling of the blade when she unsheathes it is something for Jaime to feel alone. She presses it against the length of his neck.

He closes his eyes again, staying perfectly still, the length of metal pressed soft against his jugular. Cersei doesn't bother trying to stifle the sound that falls between her lips, half a sigh, half a moan. Her desire is painted harsh on the features of her brother's face.

He is vulnerable here, in her hold, the sharp line of his own sword against his neck. She could cut him open, bleed him, doesn't need any of his skill when they're positioned like this. Jaime knows it, and his response is not to shy away, but to hold still, to lean into her touch. If she is a flame, he is the moth; drawn, relented, willing to throw himself in the fire.

She is surprised at how controlled her hands are when she pulls the sword back, turns the blade around. The hilt is long enough that if she angles it just right, she can manage to hold it while pressing the end tentatively, questioningly at his lips.

Jaime's eyes shoot open, staring up at her. She meets him back with a cool indifference that is calculated, planned, though she feels anything but. The entire world is condensed down to him, his lips, the way he chooses to proceed next.

And he opens his mouth, lets her slide the hilt of his sword into it.

She watches him, transfixed, rigid, every nerve on fire. It takes everything in her to keep her hands steady. Her hand in his hair is meant to encourage, and he seems to take it as such, slides his lips over the pommel, can't go up the hilt much more than that, but it hardly matters. That sight alone is almost too much; Cersei's breath hitches in her throat, watching him.

"Yes," she whispers, fingers threaded through his hair, pulling him down just a bit further. Jaime closes his eyes and lets her. She wonders if he's thinking of her, of her mouth around his cock.

His hand between her thighs, hard and forceful at the wetness there, comes as a surprise. He presses into her just as he leans back, lips and tongue drawing down the length of the hilt before leaning forward to take it in again. A tremble racks through her, once, a cut-off cry at the sight, at the feel of his fingers, urgent, sliding against her, into her. She has to draw her hand from his hair to steady herself, keep the blade away from slicing into her.

"Yes," she repeats, groans, thrusting her hips into his touches, grinding down on his fingers. "Like that, Jaime, good."

When he moans around the hilt she knows she's gone. She comes with a shudder, under his fingers, broken at the sight of him open before her.

The sword clatters to the floor, forgotten. "Get up," she growls, and he's up and on her so fast she can barely think, shoving her back on the bed, unlacing the front of his breeches. She doesn't have to tell him what to do, he already knows, shoves her legs apart with a ferocity that makes her shudder, makes her groan, even before he's buried himself inside her.

He hides his own moans against her neck, lips still so warm. She shudders beneath him, his thrusts desperate, unrelenting; being on his knees for her has made him as achingly hard as it has her wet. She meets the thrust of his hips, lost in the scent of him, the familiarity. It's the first time they've been together since the morning of her wedding. She wonders what that does to him, to think of her spread beneath Robert like this. As if it should matter; she is _his_ , just as he is hers. They show it to each other here, in the only way they have ever known how.

She can't let him come inside her, it's too risky. She tells him so, murmurs against him, pulls at his hair. For a moment she is afraid he doesn't care, but he pulls away, lets out a noise as if it physically pains him. Cersei reaches for his cock, slick between her fingers. She slides her hands over him, hard on her stomach. That sight is good, too. She lets the moan in the back of her throat out, drags her fingers tight around him, again and again. It is almost as if she can feel his pleasure building in her own body. When she looks up, Jaime has eyes only for her, a darkness or a hunger or both in his eyes.

After he comes, she runs her fingers through his seed on her skin, lets him watch.

She should have known it would be like this. Even when they are not together, physically side by side, Jaime is there, a splinter caught beneath her skin. She traces the outline of his body beside her in the aftermath with lazy, gentle fingers. He watches her, that old familiar darkness locked behind his eyes, some sort of silent promise shared just between them. She remembers nights that seem a lifetime ago now -- late nights at the Rock, limbs and bodies tangled together until morning, a completeness so innate it doesn't even have a name until you break it in two.

She has to go. She has a different man to share a bed with, now.

"Don't go," Jaime says, as if reading her thoughts. His voice is low, cracked. She kisses him, soft like her touches, lets him slide his arms around her, for a little while longer, at least.

She hates when he makes requests he knows she can't grant.

  


V. JAIME, 289 AL

If she is wounded, she is not, at least, broken. She is no more his to fix than she is Robert's to break. But then, that isn't _right_ , not exactly; it settles wrong, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, an uncomfortable weight, an unsolved riddle. They belong to each other, of that much at least he will always be certain. _I am yours and you are mine_ , she stood before more than half of King's Landing and said those words to the wrong man. Sometimes words are wind, so can't the wind also be words, whispered, barely spoken, waiting to take shape or be taken?

Cersei's eyes are empty, reflectionless, in the dim and grimy room. Jaime was there when their son was born; it had been the most terrifying day of his life. _Mother died like this_ , he'd almost said it out loud, like a frightened child, as if maybe his sister could take some of that fear and swallow it down, too. But she had enough, and then she had gripped his hand so tight he thought she'd break every bone in his fingers. After that she had started screaming, and all his thoughts had scattered like flowers on a funeral pyre, the world condensed down to Cersei, the sweat on her brow and her nails digging into his flesh with a fervor he had never felt from her before, nor has since.

She doesn't hold his hand tonight and she doesn't scream. It's the opposite of a birth, anyway. Tucked back in some dark alley in a forgotten corner of Flea Bottom, the midwife is an old woman with her tongue cut out, reminding him unsettlingly of Ser Ilyn. The blind wouldn't do much good in this situation, so the mute have to do instead. Better than bringing the queen to some unsuspecting midwife with a tongue still attached and Jaime having to cut her open, too, after she cuts the king's unborn child from his sister's womb.

The woman moves with a sort of elderly diligence, an easy nonchalance, as she works between Cersei's thighs. He can't see what she draws out, but he hears it. Heavy, wet noises. Cersei blinks in the half-dark. Jaime counts the seconds in her eyelashes.

Even here, she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. It has been a long time since thinking that has left him feeling anything less than winded, a blow to his gut in battle.

The night hides them well enough as they make their way back through the streets, Cersei wrapped in a cloak with the hood drawn to hide her features, tucked in front of him on the horse. It is not far but he realizes before they're back that she's fallen asleep. She stirs against him when he murmurs her name, brushes fingers across her cheek.

He heard Father say, once, that the kind of love in songs wasn't love, it was infatuation. The love of whores was actually just lust; the love of family, devotion. The kind of love that started wars, Rhaegar for Lyanna -- that stuff wasn't _love_ , either, it was obsession.

It is nearing dawn by the time they return to the Red Keep. His sister's face is bloodless white, as he helps her down from the horse, her hands cold on his forearm. Her fingers slide down, lock momentarily on his wrist, before she pulls away, straightening her skirts and her cloak around her. Jaime watches her go.

He thinks it might all be wrong. Infatuation, lust, devotion, obsession -- what were those things other than facets of love, pieces of a whole that made up one undeniable force, that would drag you down and eat you alive? All the better if you let it, if you welcomed each piece, scars beneath the skin, made them part of yourself.

Even several weeks after their visit to Flea Bottom, Robert never notices a thing. "People hardly notice what they aren't looking for," Cersei tells him. She sounds annoyed. She sounds sad.

Tonight she sits beside her royal husband at a feast, thrown for some lord or the other visiting the Red Keep. She drowns him out, drowns out the whole room, dressed in gold and green, glittering like her eyes. Cersei at court has always been breathtaking to behold. He'll never get over it, never -- not since he was fifteen coming home to see her. His sister walks into a room and all the air goes out of it, replaced by her presence.

She will never be broken, Jaime thinks, not by some joke of a king, of a man, as the one who sits beside her. She will always be golden, beautiful, radiant. Royalty hardly runs in blood, he decides; or if it does, the realm has had the wrong family ruling them, for a long time.

Later, when Robert is drunk and fucking some whore, Jaime lays down the queen, unlaces her gown, kissing down the length of her, her skin feverish warm against his lips, his fingers. She's had some to drink, too, and she moans low in her throat at every touch.

"Jaime." Her voice draws him back to himself. Her hands soft at the side of his face draw him back to her.

"Hm?"

Her eyes are alight, mischievous. "Let's make another child."

He fucks her slow, like they belong to each other, because they do. She is everything -- protection and home and danger. Every feeling he could feel and every person he could be is tangled in the gold of her hair, between his fingers. She moans, whispers for him to fuck her harder, and he does that, too.

She is no more wounded than he is. He traces her hips, her stomach, after, watches the soft rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, nearing sleep. He forgets, sometimes, how she picks up the pieces of him, as much as he ever does for her.

She is light, and home, and warmth, something in the darkness calling him down, calming him. He knows they cannot stay like this, but he also knows he will always come back to her, as the moon follows the sun. He lets himself close his eyes and linger in the moment, anyway, for a little while longer.  



End file.
